1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to computer systems and the like, and more particularly, to a system and method for mapping hot swap states from one system to another.
2. Description of Related Art
A computer platform can be designed with a variety of implementations/architectures that are either defined within existing standards, for example the PCI Industrial Computer Manufacturers Group (PICMG) standards, or can be customized architectures. For example, a computer platform can be designed with a Compact Peripheral Component Interconnect (CPCI). The CPCI is a high performance industrial bus based on the standard PCI electrical specification in rugged 3U or 6U Eurocard packaging. CPCI is intended for application in telecommunications, computer telephony, real-time machine control, industrial automation, real-time data acquisition, instrumentation, military systems or any other field requiring high-speed computing, modular and robust packaging design, and long-term manufacturer support. Because of its high speed and bandwidth, the CPCI bus is particularly well suited for many high-speed data communication applications, such as server applications.
Compared to a standard desktop PCI, CPCI supports twice as many PCI slots (typically 8 versus 4) and offers an ideal packaging scheme for industrial applications. Conventional CPCI cards are designed for front loading and removal from a card cage. The cards are firmly held in position by their connector, card guides on both sides, and a faceplate that solidly screws into the card cage. Cards are mounted vertically allowing for natural or forced air convection for cooling. Also, the pin-and-socket connector of the CPCI card is significantly more reliable and has better shock and vibration characteristics than the card edge connector of the standard PCI cards.
Conventional CPCI defines a CPCI backplane that is typically limited to eight slots. More specifically, the bus segment of the conventional CPCI system is limited to eight slots in which node cards (e.g., motherboards or front cards) and mating input/output (I/O) cards (e.g., transition cards) are installed. Typically, the node card provides substantially all features and functions (i.e., clocking, arbitration, configuration, and interrupt processing) of the CPCI system, and the I/O card allows access to these features and functions by providing ports, such as Small Computer System Interface (SCSI) ports.
The newest trend in CPCI systems is to support hot-swappable node and/or I/O cards. Hot-swappability is the ability to unplug and plug cards while the systems are operating. In other words, hot-swappability is the ability to exchange cards while the system is running so that there is no need to shut down and subsequently reboot the system. The PICMG hot-swap/High-Availability (HA) specification (e.g., PICMG 2.0 R3.0 or PICMG 2.1 R2.0), which allows the powering up and down of the card by the hot-swap controller, defines, among other things, that all CPCI slots are controlled individually with states that control the insertion of a hot-swappable card into a slot of the backplane. The states are specified in PICMG specifications. However, if the CPCI cards are to be managed by a management software (or management ware) that has plug-in units based on the Telecommunication Management Network (TMN) standard, these plug-in units cannot use the PICMG states that describe the state of an HA CPCI card. In the context of an embodiment of the present invention, plug-in units are hardware and/or software modules that add specific features or services to a larger system. Accordingly, it would be advantageous to provide a CPCI system that can reliably map the PICMG states of an HA CPCI card into a plurality of operation and available states (or status) for the TMN plug-in units.